All and Sundry
by Fiercest
Summary: Sixteen different ways we learn to love. Team7. Sasusaku.


**A/N: Vignettes that are quickly jotted down then promptly forgotten.**

**Pun intended.**

_000_

_All and Sundry_

_000_

**i.**

"Shouldn't you be at the front lines?" he shouts over the chaos. Despite his aversion to speech, he had never lacked volume.

"When your defenses are breached, you don't move the knights and rooks forward in a half cocked attack, hoping that by chance that you'll take your opponents pieces," she smirked, "You move them backwards to protect your king."

"If you're a knight, what does that make me, Sakura?"

"A pawn."

**ii.**

Naruto threw his head back with a roar of laughter that surged from toe to hair, rocking his very system. He was great! He was magnificent! He had finally done it! He was Naruto Uzumaki, king, ruler. Ramenkage.

Sakura blinked in confusion, "All they did was fill your order."

**iii.**

Naruto and Sasuke made a pact long ago. Sealed in sweat, tears and a lot of spilled blood, more than just their own. They made a promise to themselves and each other that they would never leave each other alone in the dark recesses of their own minds. They would never let each other go to their dark place because that was what friends did for one another.

But Sasuke has forgotten this, he has drawn a circle in the sand and placed himself in the middle, fenced himself in. He has broken his oath.

And Naruto's only coherent thought is that he has to remind him

**iv.**

Sasuke is alone again. He wonders why this strikes him now. Now of all times. Months after the act. He remembers the movement, he has duplicated it again and again, hundreds of times delivering the same final strike to thin air over and over.

He reenacts it because he doesn't understand. He could have dodged. _Itachi could have dodged_. But he didn't. He _didn't_ and Sasuke will never understand why.

**v.**

"Stupid Ero-senin," Naruto grumped.

Sasuke and Sakura suddenly felt very thankful that all they'd had to deal with were vaguely threatening sexual advances and 3 ton boulders being hurled at them at 100 k/h.

Anything was better than Jiraiya on a creative binge.

That usually meant three things for the final sanin's young protégé; he was about to be very broke, very tired and very disturbed with the graphic details that the first drafts contained.

**vi.**

"DIE BITCH DIE!" Sakura went stabby stabby on the Rain ninja's ass.

"Calm down Sakura," Sasuke warned, "I don't think we're supposed to have quite so much fun winning wars."

"If you're gonna do something then you might as well enjoy it." she countered with a sneer as she kicked another rain ninja in the gut.

Sasuke sighed and ruffled her hair in fond annoyance. (Sakura took a moment out of her battle craze to consider if that made any sense. she decided that it might be for a man who thinks 'annoying' is a term of endearment. Then figured that it probably didn't matter anyway.) "Well, just don't die, alright?"

"PFFT. Like I'd die for a stupid war. THEY STARTED IT! _They_ can die for their country."

**vii.**

Naruto slammed his head against the wall of books he'd piled around himself and claimed as his fortress of solitude. Like a superhero. Seriously. Superheroes shouldn't have to STUDY.

"Naruto."

Seriously, what is _up_ with that?

"NARUTO!"

"Yes Sakura-chan?" He smiled charmingly. See, THIS is what a superhero's life is like. Hot girls all up in their business.

"We're going to move on to elements alright?"

Isn't she awesome?

-SMACK-

"PAY ATTENTION! Do you want to pass the jounin exams or NOT?"

**viii.**

"Come on come on come _on_." "Calm down Sakura." "I CANT CALM DOWN. DON'T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN." "Well don't SMACK me!" "You deserved it!" "Why?" "Because that was a stupid stupid thing we did." "How so?" "Stupid and illegal!" "It was not." "Stupid, illegal and all your fault! You're a bad influence on me Sasuke-kun. You make me do very bad things!" "You aren't seriously pinning this on me!" "If the donkey tail fits!" "...Stop trying to be funny!"

**ix.  
**

"Fine. Bring it bitch." Naruto raised his fists reluctantly as Karin inched forward.

She herself was shaking; in anger that is, "WHO ARE YOU CALLING A BITCH BLONDIE? I CAN _SOOOOO_ TAKE YOU!"

Naruto snorted and donned a kind smile, "Um..._no_ Carly, you can't."

"IT'S KARIN!"

"Right," he nodded sagely, "Whatever. You're _that_ girl...the one who Sasuke bites...which is totally gross by the way. Also? Probably unsanitary. Beware diseases."

**x.**

It would be the hardest thing they will ever do. But they will do it, because she asked it of them. And she has done everything they have ever needed from her.

So they attack.

The first kunais are flung, a rain of metal, but she does not move. Both pause, confused by the turn of events. There are too many to catch. Instead she catches one and the others dig into her flesh ripping, tearing.

But there is no blood.

They stand there, frightened and unsure, waiting for the span of seconds to end, for it to be an illusion. "Release!" Sasuke growls, panicked and frustrated. Then the quills of knives shudder and move then with a great heave they fly out, towards them. They dodge.

There is no evidence of the wounds.

And all the while she had been smiling.

This is Sakura's true power. And they will never doubt it again.

**xi.**

"...You stole my socks," Sakura blinked and looked down at her now bare toes, wiggling them experimentally.

"They were stupid looking."

"They were not!"

Naruto gave her a flat look and raised his eyebrow. He waved one rainbow striped sock like a flag, "I wear orange and I think they're stupid looking."

Sasuke nodded, silently thanking his friend for backing up his decision to steal the offensive things.

"But my feet are cold!"

"So find some other way to warm them," Sasuke replied.

Five minutes, moe eyes and a verbal lashing pertaining to a woman's right to wear whatever she chooses later, Sasuke and Naruto found themselves rubbing her feet while watching a romcom.

"You just had to open your mouth. Didn't you teme?"

**xii.**

'This shit's gone too far.'

"This shit has gone WAAAAY too far." "But Sakura-chan!" "I mean, It's not like I didn't see this coming, or that I discriminate or anything! I mean, I'm totally cool with it. But could you NOT flaunt the fact that the boy I thought was the love of my life chose to turn to you and consequently a life of homosexuality? It's sort of a blow to the ego." "WHAT?"

**xiii.**

"Where've you been?" She had meant the question as a perfectly innocent inquiry between roomates. She hadn't actually thought anything of it. But that was before and this is now. And Naruto's silence was chillingly telling. His expression was the guiltiest expression that ever crawled out from under the Rock of Shame and Dishonour and it made her simply explode with glee and sadistic joy at his expense.

"What did you do?"

Naruto's guilty face turned completely black then washes with red before draining completely of blood. His left eye twitched more than was probably healthy. "Nothing. Nowhere. Gee Sakura-chan," he stretched exaggeratedly, yawning. "I'm tuckered out, goodnight!" he disappeared into his room. Sasuke, who had slipped in unnoticed behind Naruto smirked.

"Jiraiya gave him a first edition of his new book."

"Ah."

**xiv.**

_Boing…_

"You know, this might work a little better if you untie me."

_Whiiiiirr…_

"This might work a little better if you put the gag back in."

"Asshole."

"Dobe."

"You kinda look like that guy from that show? You know the one who all tall dark and hunky? Can you like, say one of the lines for me?"

"No," Sasuke hissed with a horrifyingly deep and dark stare to back up his annoyance with the appropriate raging fires of horrifying hell.

"He's not much fun is he," the girl pouted in mock annoyance as she jerked a thumb in Sasuke's direction.

Naruto mentally smacked himself for the dazed way that he was looking at something he probably shouldn't have been looking at. He put on his most suave smile. "Nope, I'm way more fun. Maybe some time I could show you?"

Sasuke smacked the other man upside the head. Because Sakura was not there to do it and he was really _really_ overstepping boundaries that a 27 year old really shouldn't overstep. "Minor, moron. She's a minor."

Naruto's hand, otherwise occupied with trying to untie himself, twitched distractingly. His face fell. "The law is stupid," he concluded.

Sasuke slapped a palm over his eyes and wondered what in the world possessed him to sign up for a mission while Sakura was on leave. Really, this was not one of their brighter moments of clarity.

When the boys came home, thoroughly harried, one of them with a bright pink streak in his hair, Sakura just laughed.

No sympathy for the wicked.

**xv.**

Sasuke wasn't big on this whole _'love'_ thing. Not at all. He totally hasn't been Mr. Romance. He likes things simple and clear. Outlined. Like a business proposition.

That's why he most definitely did NOT throw out the flowers he found in Sakura's office, replacing them with a stack of stationary with his fan on it (he did it because he was sick of looking at her pink _sparkly_ kind. Seriously, who has scented stationary?). And he _so_ didn't walk her home from the hospital _'just because'_ (She was weak! Who knew what trouble she'd get into left to her own devices?). Sasuke was undeniably not in love.

Love was inconvenient, love was stupid lo-

'Why is she coming closer? What the heck is she doi-?' … 'Is that spearmint?'

**xvi.**

Ninjas like to get it right on the first try. Because a lot of the time, when they make a mistake somebody (most likely them) dies.

They don't like to make mistakes because the alternative to being right isn't very pretty and so, things usually work out for them.

It's why you so often hear about ninjas ending up with their first love.

Their lives are so short, it's pretty much a _'fuck it, at least I'll have somebody'_ syndrome. Ninjas; they don't want to be alone. Because the burden of what they have to do is something no one should have to go home to an empty house carrying.

**A/N: Au revoir!**

**'Tis UnProofed and Unbetaed... sorry.  
**


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